&quot; Yes, all four quadrants, damnit!&quot;

I don't believe I could have said it any louder than that - and shouldn't have done so because there was people around - but the girl at the receptionist desk in the dental office was starting to pinch a nerve.

" Yesh, all four quadranches," I said. I had bloated lips (or what I felt like bloated lips) and could barely move my mouth. I couldn't close them either and was afraid of slobbering all over the counter, so I smothered my mouth with my hand.

She didn't bat an eyelash.

" Are you on medi-care?" she said.

" Excush me?" I said.

" Medicare?"

I shook my head. " Debit."

She raised an eyebrow. " We only take credit."

" Debit, credit, whatever. " Already I felt guilty for overreacting, so I said, " Ish been a damn, long day."

She ignored me. " That'll be three hundred dollars."

" Yesh."

I waited for the swipe of the card and the chit-chit-chit of the receipt printing and the riiiiiiiip! as she tore it off and handed it for me to sign. I swooped down on it with my uniball, slid it back over the counter and was waved out toward the exit to searing, white freedom (with my swollen lips).

hah, that reminds me of this one time, back when i was a slave to the man (in the army). I got all 4 wisdom teeth pulled, and they gave me a crap load of oxycodine, so i was high as a kite. 2 days after the op, I wake up and the right side of my face has swollen to baseball-like proportions. no exaggeration. I go back to the dentist and they start digging in my mouth, they said there was a dorito fragment lodged in one of the holes where a wisdom tooth used to be. They were angry that i had ignored instructions and hadn't been sticking to a all liquid/old people food diet, and now i'd gone and gotten the site infected.

Anyway, they removed it, but the swelling took forever to go away. It was sooo embarrassing. I remember telling people i got into a fight, cuz i didn't want to tell them that there was a dorito sponsored bacterial infection in my mouth.... XD